By Gareth Evans, May 5, 2021
Peace by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images
Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a presentation the author gave at an international webinar hosted by the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament on 29 April 2021.
No first use is back on the global nuclear weapons campaign agenda, supported internationally by organizations like Global Zero and Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. The issue has also been given new life in the United States by the election of an evidently sympathetic President Biden and the reintroduction into Congress by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Adam Smith of their No First Use Act. Although the case for no first use has been well made before by Scott Sagan, Morton Halperin, and others, including Ramesh Thakur and John Holdren in this journal, it is timely, accordingly, to revisit the arguments that make it so compelling a policy choice.
A nuclear-armed state is said to have a no-first-use policy when it makes an explicit declaration that it will not use nuclear weapons either preventively or preemptively against any adversary (nuclear-armed or not) and keeps them available only for use or threat of use by way of retaliation following a nuclear strike against itself or its allies. A less robust, but still meaningful, formulation of essentially the same idea is a declaration that “the sole purpose of the possession of nuclear weapons is to deter the use of such weapons against one’s own state and that of one’s allies.” This was the formula President Obama was prepared to embrace in 2010 until, unhappily, he was dissuaded by some of his NATO and Asia Pacific allies—and it is the position that President Biden still seems to support.
There is a long way to go in getting universal buy-in to either formulation, given the present nuclear postures of all nine currently nuclear-armed states. Only China and India currently claim to be committed to no first use. The United States, in its 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, stated that it does not maintain a no-first-use policy on the grounds that US response options must remain flexible to deter both nuclear and non-nuclear attacks; Russia formally abandoned an earlier pledge in the 1990s; France has long maintained a first-use posture; the United Kingdom, Pakistan and North Korea have not ruled it out; and Israel, as ever, continues to refuse to confirm that it even has nuclear weapons.
Why not no use instead of no first use? There will always be those in the peace movement for whom any talk of no first use of nuclear weapons is unconscionable. It’s not no first use they want, but no use at all, under any circumstances. Those who take this position argue that campaign energy and resources should be totally directed to getting the Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty, which is already supported by the great majority of states, universally embraced. They reject halfway measures which contemplate the possibility of something happening that must remain forever unthinkable.
In principle, this is a compelling argument. Nuclear weapons are not only the most indiscriminately inhumane ever devised, but any use of them is an existential risk to life on this planet as we know it. No one should waver for an instant in settling, as an endpoint, for anything less than global zero—the total elimination of nuclear weapons from the face of this planet.
But honesty demands acknowledgement that, right now, that end point is as far away as it has ever been. The Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty has huge moral and emotional appeal and remains very important in building and reinforcing the normative case against the legitimacy of nuclear weapons. It has, however, no buy-in whatsoever from any of the nuclear-armed states or those that think they benefit from their protection. Nor will it have buy-in for the foreseeable future, for reasons which are not just ideological, geopolitical, and psychological, but go to verification and, above all, enforcement.
As unpalatable as this will be to some, and as overcautious as it will be to others, the only way forward, toward a nuclear-weapon free world—in this world as we find it, not what we would want it to be—is incremental. The process needs to be broken into manageable steps, focusing in the first instance on serious nuclear risk reduction, decreasing the salience of nuclear weapons in countries’ defense planning, and creating doubts in policymakers’ minds about not only the legitimacy but the utility of nuclear deterrence. If one wants real-world progress, one should never make the best the enemy of the good. That is, we should not take the view that settling for anything less than perfection is not necessary compromise but capitulation.
The priority now, as stated in the report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, which I co-chaired with former Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi in 2009, is to direct immediate advocacy energy not into elimination, but rather minimization. In such a risk reduction agenda, achieving universal buy-in by the nuclear-armed states to no first use would be one of the four highest priorities.
Those priorities can be summarized as the “four Ds.” The first, nuclear doctrine—no first use—is given practical credibility by the next three: de-alerting—taking nuclear weapons off high launch-ready alert status; reduced deployment—drastically downsizing the number of those actively deployed; and decreased stockpiles—reducing overall numbers to around 2,000, down from the more than 13,000 now in existence.
A world with very low numbers of nuclear weapons, with very few of them physically deployed, with practically none of them on high-alert launch status, and with every nuclear-armed state visibly committed to never being the first to use them, would still be very far from perfect. But one that could achieve these objectives would be a very much safer world than we live in now.
Why not no limits instead of no first use? The case for no first use rests on two main pillars: keeping the option of first use is dangerous, and it is unnecessary. One could also conceivably invoke a further argument that any first use would be potentially illegal under international humanitarian law. But the relevant considerations here—necessity, proportionality, and so on—are just as applicable to retaliatory use as they are to first use, and as such don’t advance the present argument.
A no-limits option is dangerous. Retaining a first-use option is dangerous, both for wider global peace and security and often for nuclear-armed states’ own interests, in five main ways:
A no-limits option is unnecessary. The dangers and risks associated with retaining a first-use option are not outweighed by any compelling security necessity, including for the major nuclear powers and those non-nuclear states who might believe they shelter under their protection:
Is no first use credible? The last-ditch argument usually made against no-first-use declarations is that they are simply not believable. The claim is that other states will behave as if they were never made, meaning that there will be no end to the dangers of ambiguity described above; and further, that in any event, in extremis, any state will simply do what it believes it has to do. But, as Scott Sagan convincingly argues, the first part of this critique understates the extent to which military leaders do, in practice, pay close attention to others’ declaratory policies. These signals of intent do shape the expectations of allies and adversaries alike, in what can either be a virtuous or vicious cycle.
What about the argument that any state could reverse, in an instant, any no-first-use declaration it made? That would be much harder to do, and the credibility of the declaration much harder to question, if the doctrinal commitment were to be accompanied by other major risk reduction measures, including the other three Ds: de-alerting, reduced deployments, and decreased stockpile numbers.
The bottom-line case for adopting no-first-use policies or their sole-purpose functional equivalents is not that they will, by themselves, bring an end to the terrible existential risk to life on this planet that will continue so long as any nuclear weapons remain. It is that they are an extremely important contributor to immediate nuclear risk reduction, to the necessary ongoing progress of delegitimising nuclear weapons in policymakers’ thinking, and to maintaining a global commitment to non-proliferation.
Above all, no-first-use policies and their sole-purpose functional equivalents are an absolutely necessary waystation on the road to complete nuclear disarmament. There is a long way to go in achieving a safer and saner nuclear-weapons-free world but getting the United States and the other reluctant nuclear-armed states to embrace no first use would be a great place to start.
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NFU, like TPNW, is a great thing to strive for. Personally, I work on warhead verification procedures applicable to TPNW. The chances that the UK, France, Pakistan, North Korea, or Russia would adopt NFU in the present geopolitical climate are slender. The chances that they would all do so in the foreseeable future are zero. They each perceive themselves as potentially up against adversaries possessing much greater conventional forces. A more achievable goal is Defensive Last Resort, which is already the explicit policy of Russia. It has the advantages of NFU discussed in this article, and could be universally adopted. This would be a major milestone for the world. It is, however, not good enough. So then we have to move on to minimum deterrence, NFU, and TPNW, probably in that order.
A pledge of No First Use of Nuclear Weapons, on the face of it, sounds like a good thing. If every nuclear-armed nation took the pledge, goes the argument, the risk of nuclear weapons being used would be diminished.
Some argue that a NFU pledge is worth only the air expended when one takes it. Because it is in force right up until the moment that it isn’t, the moment when a nation decides it is necessary to use its nuclear weapons—after all, the US and other nuclear states have the weapons for a reason, and the reason is more complicated than the “deterrent” effect we have all been sold. In 1982, Brezhnev made a No First Use pledge; it was official Russian policy until 1993, when it was rescinded. That’s the problem with pledges. They are not enforceable, and they are retractable.
Proponents of a NFU pledge say that it adds a level of stigma that must be considered by anyone contemplating breaking the pledge and giving a launch order.
One reasonable counter to that is that this stigma already exists and has been effectual since 1945. Nine nations have amassed stockpiles of various sizes, many of them have been involved in conflicts, some of which they have lost, and never, since 1945, have nuclear weapons been employed against an enemy except as a threat.
On the other side of the ledger, those who are unenthusiastic about a NFU campaign mount several arguments.
1. The NFU pledge allows nuclear weapons nations to act as though they are doing something when, in effect, they are merely stating the status quo;
2. The NFU pledge conveys an illusion of risk reduction which may lead to a false sense of security among the general public, undermining efforts to get support for more effective anti-nuclear weapons campaigns.
3. The campaign for a NFU pledge requires resources—time, energy, money—that could be deployed in a campaign that was actually more meaningful.
To push for a NFU pledge in the name of reducing the danger of nuclear catastrophe is intellectually dishonest. As long as nuclear weapons exist and are deployed in ready-to-use conditions, the real (not perceived) risk of nuclear catastrophe is exactly the same regardless of the height of the stack of pledges of non-use. At any moment, for any reason, any one of the leaders of nine governments around the world has the capacity to unleash the forces of hell, killing hundreds of millions of people in one afternoon, and consigning the vast majority of the rest of the world to misery, suffering, radiation poisoning, starvation and eventual death under the dark skies of a nuclear winter.
Military and political leaders may find this acceptable from their point of view—they too rarely look through the other equally valid lens—the humanitarian and environmental cost of nuclear weapons. Seen through this lens, any validation of continued reliance on nuclear weapons is unacceptable. This is the message 122 nations sent to the nuclear-armed states in July 2017 when they voted to approve the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The only true assurance that humanity—all creation, really—will not suffer that horrific fate has been known since the beginning of the nuclear age and has been repeated tens of millions of times by hibakusha and others: we must get rid the world of nuclear weapons altogether. Complete nuclear disarmament.
NFU advocates argue it is a reality-based step in that direction. But they do not frame their argument in that context. At least Mr. Evans, way down near the end of his article, allows the fundamental weakness of his NFU argument and acknowledges that concrete actions — dealerting, reducing deployments, and stockpile reductions — are worth pursuing. The last of these, stockpile reductions, presumably heads toward zero.
How to get to that zero? The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is the only vehicle we have now that has the hope of getting us to zero. After more than fifty years, it seems to be generally agreed that the effective limits of the Nonproliferation Treaty have been reached; the nuclear club has nearly doubled in size since that Treaty entered into force, and the nuclear-armed nations have made it clear that they have no intention of achieving the “complete disarmament” laid out as their solemn commitment in Article 6 and affirmed as an obligation by the World Court in 1996.
That is certainly the consensus of the 122 nations that voted for the TPNW and many of the people living in countries that didn’t vote for the TPNW. There is nothing in the record, historical or otherwise, to suggest they are anything but right.
It is a worthy endeavor to get the US (and other nuclear armed nations) to sign and ratify the Treaty—but a Treaty is only worth the paper it is printed on (and not even that, if you ask Native Americans). So sign and ratify is step 1 (a huge step). Full implementation is step 2. We have our work cut out for us.
In the meantime, there are only two meaningful steps that can be taken to truly reduce (not eliminate) the nuclear danger.
One is to physically disable every nuclear warhead/bomb/missile in such a way as to render it inoperable until a human being acts to re-arm the weapon. This is the only protection that will prevent an impetuous launch or a launch in error; it is also the only protection that will render hackers powerless.
Two is to reduce the stockpiles of nuclear armed nations to a total number that would be below the nuclear winter threshhold. Probably less than ten warheads apiece. Robert McNamara famously said three nuclear bombs are sufficient to deter attack. That proposition was effectively tested by North Korea when it announced it had a nuclear device.
Any nation that contemplated using its few warheads would have to consider that the effort would have no decisive military value—it would simply lay waste. Nor would it confer any kinds of advantage, making use extremely unlikely.
Nations who believe that their nuclear stockpiles convey strength could keep a few missiles and cling to their bully posture until the Treaty is fully implemented. If they were wise, they would use the time to develop relationships of mutuality with other nations so they could co-exist in mutually beneficial ways in a post-nuclear-weapons world.
Groups and organizations that are saying, “Look, we’re hardcore committed to abolition. All the way. We know there are steps to getting there. But we’re holding the tape at the finish line, demanding the disarms race get underway,”—these groups are not the enemy of the good; they are the greatest good. They are being honest with you and themselves and everyone about the real, actual risk—the one that keeps the hands of the Doomsday Clock perilously close to midnight.